In the “information age,” managing information is critical to the success of many organizations, such as private companies, universities, government agencies, and the like. With dramatic increases in computing power and access to vast amounts of information via networks such as the Internet, organizations amass information at an unprecedented rate. However, typically this information is poorly organized, if at all. It resides in many locations, such as on personal computers and laptops, on shared network drives, and in databases. Information is stored in often incompatible file types associated with different applications, such as spreadsheets, word processors, relational databases, and presentation programs, as well as in proprietary formats in files associated with custom applications. The information itself often takes diverse forms, such as text, graphics and images, numerical data, and the like. Given this plethora of information types, file types in which it is stored, and numerous locations in which the files reside, it is virtually impossible for any organization to sift through more than a tiny fraction of the information it has amassed, to find the information relevant to a particular subject, issue, or problem, or to discover synergies among its information resources.
Document management systems attempt to organize information by storing source files in a logical way. A typical document management system provides a plurality of subject headings under which source files containing information may be organized. Users may create sub-classes, annotate source files with descriptions of their content, and otherwise attempt to impose their own organizational structure onto the document management system. While these measures may impose a coarse order on the information, they cannot discover links between documents based on their content, only on their classification within the system and any annotations. Furthermore, even sophisticated and well-managed document management systems are typically only deployed within a department, sub-agency, or other relatively small organizational structure.
Insight and innovation often arise from unexpected synergy. However, highly relevant and related information items may remain separately classified in a traditional document management system, particularly where the synergy resides in an ancillary aspect of the information in a document. As such, it is not likely to be reflected in either the document's classification or in annotations attempting to identify or characterize it. In short, the “top down” approach to information management inherent in traditional document management systems inevitably misses critical linkages of information residing in an organization's collection of documents. Furthermore, traditional document management systems lack effective facilities for observing or tracking the organic growth of information over time—information that itself may prove enlightening.